This invention relates to a baler for producing cylindrical ("round") bales and more particularly relates to a bale discharge gate for such balers.
Prior art balers such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,182,101, 4,252,057 and 4,150,527 comprise generally a plurality side-by-side belts supported on a plurality of rollers. A bale forming chamber is defined by the sides of the baler, the rollers and the belts. One of the problems experienced with such balers is caused by crops becoming entrapped within volumes contiguous with the bale forming chamber and substantially enclosed by the sides of the baler, the rollers and the belts. The crop enters these volumes from the bale forming chamber by passing through the spaces between longitudinally adjacent belts. When the crop becomes entrapped within these volumes, it tends to wrap around the rolls which is detrimental to proper belt tracking on the rolls and tends to retard enlargement of the bale forming chamber as the bale grows in diameter. Eventually, if uncorrected, the belts become bound (or may even break) and bale formation is no longer possible until the wrapped and entrapped hay is removed.
Such problems have been found to be particularly troublesome when baling crops such as high moisture hay and extremely low moisture hay or straw.